The late humorist Florence King, one of the greatest in the grand tradition of genteel-but-acidic Southern curmudgeons, once observed, “Sanity holds no charm in the South.” No less a personage than Julia Sugarbaker of TV’s “Designing Women” declared, “This is the South, and we’re proud of our crazy people. We don’t hide them up in the attic. We bring them right down to the living room and show them off.”
Watching playwright Jerre Dye’s lovely and affecting “Distance,” now in a world premiere with Strawdog Theatre Company, one wonders how much that stereotype — the loving Southern family that always makes room for an eccentric relative — haunts the consciences of his finely drawn characters.
Dye, a native of Mississippi, knows his Southern women well, as demonstrated two years ago in “Cicada” with Route 66 Theatre Company. That play featured Lily, an anguished grieving woman in a Southern home filled with ghosts of her past.
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But while Lily has too many memories, Irene (Janice O’Neill), the Alzheimer’s, or possibly dementia, patient and lifelong resident of Memphis at the heart of “Distance,” is quickly shedding hers. “You lose the thread,” she tells us at the beginning of the show. “Things leave so quickly now.”
But she’s not going gentle into that good night. Just ask her daughter, Luvie (Anita Deely), or her caregiver, Dolly (Loretta Rezos), who get their ears pinned back regularly by the angry and frightened Irene.
There are undeniable echoes of the late Scott McPherson’s “Marvin’s Room” in Dye’s play. Like McPherson, Dye also brings in a troubled young man to the story. That would be Dylan, Dolly’s son, whom we first meet as he resentfully attempts — and fails — to change a light bulb for Irene. (John Kelly’s flickering light design serves as a handy, if occasionally too on-the-nose, metaphor for the shadows encroaching on Irene’s mind.)
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As played by the highly watchable Caleb Fullen, 26-year-old Dylan seems at times to fall along the autism spectrum. He hates changes in his routine and has a hard time communicating his feelings to others. However, like Irene, he has a habit of coming out with exactly what he’s thinking at inopportune moments.
In that sense, he’s the opposite of Leonard (Stephen Rader), the kind hairdresser who serves as a sounding board for all the women. (Yes, he’s gay — but it’s to Rader’s credit, as well as Dye’s, that his warmhearted sass illuminates rather than obscures Leonard’s own enduring sense of isolation.)
Where Dye shows himself to be a worthy successor to McPherson is in his achingly sympathetic portrait of what it’s like to be the odd woman out. One of the few memories Irene still has — and relives — involves dealing with her mother’s death at far too young an age. Deely’s stretched-to-the-limit Luvie tries to forgive the woman who always found fault with her growing up, while working-class divorced Dolly wonders just how much life has passed her by while she was just getting by.
Director Erica Weiss, who also staged “Cicada,” has a sure handle on the rhythms of Dye’s language, which goes from poetic reverie to acerbic one-liners. Even Dylan’s obscenities feel carefully planted for maximum effect. He swears in part because it keeps him from talking about the absent father who haunts his own memories.
The excellent cast dives into the material with gusto and compassion. Several interludes in Dye’s script include parallel scenes that illuminate Irene’s inner monologue while the other characters make their own connections with each other and with past incidents. One wishes that Luvie and Dolly had a couple of more scenes together; the class conflicts between them are suggested but not fully developed. But Dye makes it clear that each of them has wounds of abandonment that need tending and tenderness.
Much of “Distance” feels familiar — as sweet, tart and ultimately comforting as the lemon pie Dolly makes on her comically misguided dinner “date” with Leonard. (This is before she realizes he is, in her term, “a gaybird.”) But Dye also reminds us that people like Irene who are losing their way don’t need to be forced into old routines for the sake of our own comfort. They need sympathy and understanding and an attempt to meet them wherever the fraying thread of their consciousness may lead — from memories in the mental attic to present-day parties in the living room. In the growing canon of work about the effects of senility on family life, Dye’s play goes the distance with heart and smarts.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
“Distance” – 3.5 Stars
When: Through Oct. 1
Where: Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard St.
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Tickets: $30 at 866-811-4111 or strawdog.org
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